That Azalea Summer

That Azalea Summer

The first weeks of summer before the earth was baked into a brick and the humidity felt like a warm, wet blanket flung across the sky, farmers came rumbling over Springcreek Christian Camp in rusted tractors attached to equally ancient mowers, rakes, and balers. Like a mutant swarm of locust the equipment chewed off the grass, raked it into neat, vertical lines, and then spat it out again into grassy hairballs which decorated the hillsides until the farmers gathered enough incentive to haul it home. I always hated this time of year for as soon as the untamed grasses were nibbled to nubs, buzzards began to circle and then to feast on the smorgasbord of butchered rats, pheasants, foxes, and fawns. I would often search these grasses for a struggling life, but many times all I found were blood-caked remnants of a brutal death.

It wasn’t until that third summer on the camp when Gwen Lebrun introduced me to Azalea, the injured fawn she had found, I realized we’d been conducting the same desperate, creature-saving crusade. The month old fawn’s spindly back legs had been nicked, as if by shaving, with mower blades. The injury was so minor Neosporin and band aids were sufficient in healing the wounds, and soon the speckled fawn was teetering around the Lebrun’s front lawn on the slim, golden legs of a dancer. Azalea’s legs were not the only attribute worth envying: her limpid brown eyes were framed with lashes Tammy Faye Baker would’ve taxidermied her for if given the chance. But the other physical characteristics of our pet fawn were not as desirable. Her twitching ears were stuffed with the white, spiky hair of an old man, and her tiny teeth pointed like glass shards. When she was excited or nervous, she’d prance in place as her black nostrils flared; her tail stood up behind her like a white spear, and shiny, circular turds began cascading as if the lottery to a fertilizing company had been won.

In the beginning, besides these droplets of scat decorating our porches in the mornings, having Azalea on the premises provided us only with pleasure. But as the months passed and her pale spots faded into a glossy dun, she began to grow and her personality to change. Her first mistake was to begin weed whacking every shrub and bush within a 10 mile radius. This wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if she could have differentiated between what was lunch and what was part of the landscaping, but she didn’t. Her second and far more grievous mistake took place when she came into heat and confused me either with her competition or her means of conception.

I’d been walking up to the Gentry’s house to drop off Mother’s pumpkin nut roll when, from behind the chicken coup, I was ambushed by a full grown doe. I knew immediately it was Azalea for she wore a bright orange collar like a slightly irregular sheep dog (Gwen Lebrun did not want hunters confusing her with venison). But even though I recognized her, something glinted in Azalea’s eyes that told my baser instincts to run. And run I did. I took off at a full sprint, dropping the roll in the process, and did not dare look behind me to see her progress. Within seconds, Azalea’s loping strides had easily eaten the distance between us. The impact of her hooves hitting my back felt like the strike of hammers falling. I stumbled under the weight, my knees buckling a moment, but managed to regain my footing. Glancing over my shoulder, I gazed into the crazed eyes and lolling tongue of a doe in heat and knew this was no playful foray. I began running again, and this time, mercifully, she chose not to chase me. I didn’t even knock on the Gentry’s home, but burst inside the side storm door leading into Lydia’s patriotic kitchen.

“My goodness, child,” Lydia said, wiping a hand on the rag thrown over her shoulder, “Whatever is the matter?”

“Azalea…she–she’s after me.”

It wasn’t until Lydia lifted my sweat-shirt and surveyed my bruised and bloodied back she realized the severity of Azalea and my altercation.

“We’ll take care of that, sugar,” Lydia soothed, patting my spine. “Don’t you worry.”

The next week, as Gwen stood in the distance and sobbed against her husband’s chest, Azalea’s orange collar was cut off by a game warden, and she was loaded into a cage with the lack of pomp and circumstance of a retiring circus animal. She was then transported to Land Between the Lakes where a hunter must’ve counted himself lucky when Azalea came striding out of the woods toward him; for her curious nature and penchant to be with people would have made her an easy target.